Lecture 7 Australian Englishes
Lecture 7 Australian Englishes
Lecture 7 Australian Englishes
Australian English
‘..the fact remains that the common speech of the Commonwealth of Australia
represents the most brutal maltreatment that has ever been inflicted upon the mother
tongue of the great English speaking nations.’ (William Churchill, (1911) in Gorlach
1991:147)
Overhead in a shop:
A. Emma Chisit
1
He She
Translation:
He She
This lecture will look at the distinctive varieties of English that have
we’ll look at historical events that led to the development of the three
broad, general and educated. Then we’ll look at distinctive features of the
2
intonation), lexis, grammar, and morphology. And finally we’ll look at
and society has been profound, this topic will not be developed in detail
the British empire during the 18th century. Australia has been inhabited
set of cultures on Earth. But the English were not the first non-
trading with the Aborigines for centuries in the north of Australia, and the
Portuguese and Dutch ships had occasionally sailed and foundered on the
claimed for Britain the area known as New Holland, which he renamed
New South Wales on the east coast of the continent, that British
3
with around 1000 people, three quarters of whom were convicts, arrived
at Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour. Over the next 80 years,
most ended up staying in Australia for the rest of their lives, because of
the lack of transport back to England. The English language had arrived
English (AusE) agree that the pronunciation was largely similar to the
varieties of English from the south east of England, and was quite
Yallop, 2001) and many of them came from the urban centres of England
and Ireland including London and Dublin. It is thought that the working
class variety of English from London would have been the major dialect
But it is the children born in Australia at this time who would have
modelled their speech on the most prominent dialect of the colony that
they heard, which was either the London variety itself or varieties from
of the time. The broad Australian speech style of today has its origins
4
with the speech of these children in the 1830s according to Mitchell (cited
in Yallop, 2001).
immigrants and after that, free immigrants became the major source of
gold rushes that were attracting single male immigrants at the time.
majority speech style between 1870 and 1890. At this time, General
Australian would have coexisted with Broad Australian and would have
been seen as the new, urban, more prestigious variety. These views are
still held today to some extent with the Broad variety still associated with
5
with a school established for the 36 children of the new colony in 1788,
and culture was held as the guiding model. However, according to Honey
(1989, in Yallop, 2001), RP was not associated with high culture and
power of the British upper classes and the educated until after 1870.
was only in the late 19th century when English private schools began to
developed the Educated variety of AusE. During the First World War
with British culture including the RP accent. In the period after the First
6
elsewhere in British colonies and ex colonies (eg Zimbabwe, South
the same time many of the Australian soldiers fighting with the British
dying for the British, and sought to mark their Australian identity (usually
Empire (mostly from the higher social classes). It is at this time in the
1930s that the image of the working class Australian male in the blue
art, music, and language. Many artists and intellectuals left Australia to
‘Dame Edna’ fame, Clive James, Robert Hughes, Rolf Harris, and
Germaine Greer) and the Australian accent was seen as inferior to RP.
7
This was reflected in the voices of radio broadcasters and actors in
accents in their work. However in the 1970s, there was a shift in Anglo
accent and language. This pride was and is reflected in the use of
and their speech styles now often varies according to the radio station and
Australian speech styles do not vary much from one region of the country
to another as is the case in many other countries in the world. This is due
of gold (especially during the 19th century) and natural resources booms
(eg oil and gas in Western Australia at the moment), as well as, according
8
to Blair (1993) a sense of national identity that overrides a sense of
regional identity.
However, in spite of the above, there are some small regional differences
in vocabulary. For example a small food and general goods shop, often
open after hours, is called a milk bar in New South Wales but is called a
and Blair, 2001). Other words relating to flora and fauna and other
And Horvath and Horvath (2001) find that words like dance and advance
are pronounced with the /ae/ vowel sound (as in cat) rather than the /a/
ethnically.
Let’s look now at some of the characteristics of AusE, and we’ll begin by
9
Mitchell and Delbridge’s (1965) large sociolinguistic study of the speech
this field. These researchers and others devised the continuum of AusE
speech divided into three types: Broad, General and Cultivated. The
to British RP
RP AusE
Although less obvious than the vowel sounds, some AusE consonants
10
to other varieties of AmE). For example the /t/ consonant is frequently
butter in RP, or buh’er /bU>ə/ (with the glottal stop replacing the /t/) in
some varieties of BrE. Glottalisation of /t/ in AusE (eg but /bU>/ , great,
is, the consonant is not sounded after vowels (eg bird, mother, where the
/r/ is not pronounced - see lecture 6). Initial /h/ is frequently dropped in
used not only for questions but also for statements especially in
serves the purpose of eliciting feedback from the listener, to ensure their
11
‘Oh, occasionally Mrs L_ used to blow up [get angry at] kids when
they hadn’t done anything. And once, a girl and I were walking
she didn’t realise what was wrong with it. And it fell off and she got
the cane for breaking it. And I know very well she hadn’t broken it.
And I tried to tell the teacher. The teacher was really mean you
know.’
expressions). Look at the song Waltzing Matilda and pick out the
anti-authoritarianism, sympathy for the battler [see below] and desire for
Susan Butler, the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary (in Blair and Collins
words according to the following historical categories and points out how
Pastoral terms
12
Bloke manager of a sheep station (farm), later, any man
goldfields
Aboriginal borrowings
like call
1890-1914
shickered drunk
liquor)
World War I
13
Cobber a friend or mate
The Depression
World War II
Galah fool
Butler remarks that the greatest external influence on AusE is AmE and
borrowed from AmE during the early 19th century. American film and
television and more recently the internet have enabled American culture
that they are used in the US. However, Butler and Peters (2001) both
they adopt. For example AmE words like beach volleyball, drive-by, and
caffe latte have been adopted into AusE, but not advanced television, or
14
Traditional This is a bonzer little joint excellent, attractive,
pleasing
Come on, spill your guts reveal all you know, tell all
agreement)
television
sexually attractive
15
Jeez, you’re a couch potato! A dull or inactive person,
watching television
the country are more familiar with the more modern mostly American
between AusE, BrE and AmE, although it could be noted that in formal
usage AusE tends towards BrE forms rather than AmE forms (Gramley
and Patzold, 2004). Newbrook (2001) reports that Trudgill and Hannah
(1994) note only two pages of grammatical differences between BrE and
In addition, any differences that do exist between AusE and BrE are
with forms that are similar to BrE. For example, Australians use both
singular and plural verb forms with names of sports teams, while in
16
Both the above forms are acceptable in AusE, while only the second
football teams) was used with singular verb concord 19 times and with
2001, p.116)
(1993) suggests that Australians favour the expression Used she to do it?,
rather than Did she used to do it? (in Newbrook 20001, p. 117).
Gorlach (1991) remarks on the use of ‘she’ in AusE rather than ‘it’ in
certain expressions like she’ll be right, rather than it’ll be alright as in the
conversation:
17
B: Yeah, she’ll be right.
informal speech with ‘but’ eg I’ll finish her this arvo, but, and it is often
of the speaker.
Morphology
section of the original word together with an ending, and/or using the
definite article ‘the’ before the shortened form. The most common
endings (at least for place names) are in descending order are /i/, /o/, /s/,
and /a/
Term Hypocoristic
18
Professions:
journalist journo
musician muso
politician pollie
Place Names
Fremantle Freo
Brisbane Brissie
Scarborough Scarbs
Bangkok Bangers
Other terms
Australian Aussie
breakfast brekkie
afternoon arvo
chock-full chockers
Barry Bazza
Sharon Shazza
19
Hypocoristics are usually used to make the nouns easier and shorter to
say, with the emphasis on the first syllable, so generally nouns of one
for Mick. But there does not seem to be an explanation why only some
familiarity with the place. The following website has a useful data base
of Australian hypocoristics:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/linguistics/research/hypocoristic/
soon as English people had contact with Aboriginal people in 1768 and is
still taking place as Aboriginal affairs, culture and politics are reported in
politics and culture include the Dreamtime, country (1843) (in the sense
group), sacred site (1933), land rights (1964), Mabo (1992), native title
20
(1992), (secret) women’s/men’s business (1994), deadly (from AbE,
AusE for different kinds of local flora and fauna and also for place names
reed , ‘up’ - meeting place; or rushes near the waterhole), Yallingup (tr:
Place of Love) and in New South Wales: Wollongong (tr: the sound of
the sea, great feast of fish or hard water near ground), Wagga Wagga
(tr: crows or the place of many crows), Woy Woy (tr: much water, or big
lagoon). In recent times there has been a move to change some European
sometimes the change in name has not been commonly used eg the Olgas,
a giant rock formation next to Uluru, named in 1872 after Queen Olga of
Wurttemberg, was renamed Kata Tjuta, but this name is not very well
known. There has also been a shift in the use of the term Aborigine,
since it implies that all Aborigines have a similar language and culture,
the word for person in their own local language. So indigenous people in
21
the New South Wales area are known as Koori, in the Brisbane Area,
Finally in this lecture, I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the
Some writers prefer to replace the term ‘Aboriginal’ with the word for the
or Nyoongah English, but for the purposes of this lecture, the term
generalised term.
Malcolm (2001) makes the point that AbE can be compared to the ‘new’
22
average of 500-600 people. With relatively few speakers, the continued
survival of these languages and dialects was under threat from the large
country.
The number of European settlers arriving in the First Fleet (1,300) almost
equalled the number of Eora people (1,500) living in the area of Port
became a minority in their own land. By 1840, just over 50 years after
the arrival of the First Fleet, there were none of the 1500 Eora people left
They then became forced to move between two cultures, their own, which
gave them respect and identity, and the European one which denied them
23
AbE developed in this environment as a common language or lingua
franca between Aboriginal people across the country, each with their own
Most scholars agree that AbE developed after the formation of pidgins
and creoles (see lecture 2) during the early years of colonisation. But this
country. For example AbE developed from a creole in some parts of the
population and the perception that they are one speech community. AbE
local Aboriginal languages across the country. As is the case with many
24
speakers of African American Vernacular English mentioned in the last
lecture, speakers of AbE are often bidialectal and will use AbE or AusE
Harkins, 2000):
Phonology:
We went
Grammar:
He good man.
there
25
Lexis:
may not be the same as in AusE. A powerful example of this is the word
speaker has done to the listener. But in AbE it also has the meaning of
detail in another unit ‘Talking Across Culture’, so here I’ll just mention
that the rules of when, how and who to talk to usually follow the practices
of Aboriginal languages rather than English, and that there are strong
taboos regarding these practices which vary from one Aboriginal group to
another.
develop in separate ways, and serve as strong markers of identity for two
26